


All and Nothing

by LadyShadowphyre



Series: The Prompt Box [3]
Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Alien Biology, Body Horror, Community: st_xi_kink, Depression, Emotional Trauma, M/M, Miscarriage, Mpreg, References to Past Child Abuse, Tarsus IV, attempted self-harm, mind-meld
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-13
Updated: 2013-06-13
Packaged: 2017-12-14 20:11:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,721
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/840906
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyShadowphyre/pseuds/LadyShadowphyre
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An away mission gone wrong leads to tragedy no one could have predicted, and the revelation and fall out is more than Jim Kirk can handle alone.</p>
            </blockquote>





	All and Nothing

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the [st_xi_kink prompt](http://st-xi-kink.livejournal.com/4532.html?thread=11618228#t11618228): "Kirk gets himself injured (as he does all the time) and has to see Bones following a planetside mission. Bones is all unexpectedly grave and gently informs Kirk that he's so sorry, but he's lost his baby. Kirk's all confused cuz he didn't know he was pregnant.
> 
> "But after, when he's thinking about it (maybe right before he plans to tell Spock), it hits him that his baby died, and who cares if he didn't know about it."
> 
> This is the first time that I've written mpreg because I really dislike it to the point of active avoidance, but the prompter also asked for depression, and angst... I can do angst.

**B** ONES WAS LOOKING at him.  
  
The away mission had seemed routine enough - beam down to the planet, talk to the locals, fix the problem, beam back up in time for dinner - so Jim had taken Uhura and two of the security team with him with a jaunty wave and a "you have the Conn, Mr Spock", and figured the worst he'd have to deal with might be a sunburn.  
  
When they reached the planet's surface, however, they found that the two conflicted factions in this dispute had apparently grown too impatient to wait for an outside moderator. The transporter dropped them into the middle of a fire fight. Acting on survival instincts long ago honed by attempting to avoid his stepfather, Jim had immediately pulled Uhura to the ground and yelled for Scotty to beam them out of there. None of them had materialized on the transporter pad unscathed; as the ones in the most direct path of the phaser fire, Ensign Torero was dead and Ensign Sheldon was close to it, Uhura had a nasty burn across her upper thigh, and Jim--  
  
He'd passed out from the pain, adrenaline crash, and blood loss before he could fully assess his own injuries, but he knew one of those blasts had hit his back pretty close to his spine. Coming to in sickbay was only to be expected, and the slight ache in his neck that never seemed to diminish despite the happy floaty feeling that came with the Good Drugs meant he'd been dosed with the highest painkiller his body could tolerate that he wasn't allergic to.  
  
And now Bones was looking at him with that odd, almost pinched expression that said he had bad news for the recipient that he really didn't want to have to give voice to. It made Jim automatically try to move, feeling vague relief through the painkillers at the slightly distant sensation of his body obeying his brain's commands, so apparently he wasn't paralyzed and nothing seemed to be missing.  
  
"Alright, Bones, out with it," he commanded. Or tried to. The painkillers made him a bit drowsy, and his speech came out slightly muzzy, but he was pretty sure he managed a decent attempt at a stern "I may be in this biobed but I am still in command" look. Bones looked even more pinched and cleared his throat.  
  
"Captain," he started, then halted. "Jim," he tried again, and there was an odd note in his voice. Pained, slightly choked, like he wanted to yell and cry at the same time and couldn't afford to do either one. It actually scared Jim for a moment, because Bones was _always_ able to yell, especially at him. It was like a constant of the Universe.  
  
"What is it, Bones?" he said quietly, as intently and focused as his drugged state would allow. Bones met his eyes, then looked away. Jim felt his gut twist painfully in a way he knew couldn't be physical unless the Good Drugs had worn off already.  
  
"I'm sorry, Jim," Bones said, just as quietly. "We managed to patch up your injuries, but--" He broke off, and Jim wondered what had made it seem like Bones had put a bit too much emphasis on "your".  
  
"Just tell me," he tried to demand, but it came out as a plea. Was it Uhura? Was her injury worse than he'd thought on the transporter pad? Oh, god, had something happened to Spock while the away mission went to hell?  
  
"There was too much internal bleeding by the time we got you into surgery," Bones blurted out, looking torn and conflicted and a whole bunch of things that Jim wasn't sure he could (or wanted to) identify. "We couldn't save the baby." Bones visibly forced himself to look up and meet Jim's gaze with pained eyes. "She's dead, Jim."  
  
And Jim would swear up and down that he felt the Universe trip.

 

 **I** T WAS A little-known aspect of Vulcan physiology that, while the female Vulcan was always fertile regardless of the seven-year cycle of Pon Farr, the male Vulcan was the one to house and deliver the egg during the time of that cycle. In such cases, the egg acted almost like a parasite, taking its place in the womb or, in some rare circumstances, making a place for itself, and feeding off of the genetic material of its host to complete the DNA sequence and begin to grow into a child.  
  
Jim was treated to this lecture by Bones while he was still rather shell-shocked - he hadn't even thought it was possible for him to have children period after that incident with-- He clamped down hard on that thought, repressing it and the emotions attached to it with a ruthlessness that would have impressed any Vulcan. But that just brought him right back around to what Bones was saying... was telling him....  
  
_How the fuck did I get pregnant?_  
  
But apparently that was easier than he thought, given the way Vulcan genetics and Human genetics had combined in his First Officer. Unlike full-blooded Vulcan males, who could only... "implant" an embryo once every seven years, Spock was capable of it more like once every seven _months_. Bones estimated that the fetus (his _daughter_ , fucking _hell_ ) had developed to about the sixteen week stage before... Well, Bones was being careful not to directly mention the away mission like Jim was somehow _fragile_ , and that pissed him off even as part of his mind dazedly noted that sixteen weeks meant four months, and that fit with one of the few times Spock had been top, and he was _not_ going to think about this now.  
  
His head was starting to throb, so the Good Drugs were apparently wearing off.  
  
"Doctor McCoy," he interrupted, and he couldn't even bring himself to wince at the flat tone of his voice, no longer so muzzy with the painkillers. "What is the status of the rest of the away team?"  
  
Silence. He looked up to find Bones staring at him, mouth open apparently in mid-word. The shock faded quickly, replaced by a look of heartbreaking concern that was somehow _worse_ and Jim scowled at him.  
  
"What. Is the status. Of the away team, Doctor?" he all but bit out, and he could only hope that Bones could read his expression now as well as he always had, because Jim can't give voice to the pleading whimper to just let it go and not make him think about it right now.  
  
Bones caught the hint. Closed his mouth. Exchanged a glance with Christine across the room, then looked back at Jim.  
  
"Torero's dead," he said bluntly. Jim nodded; the blank stare and vaporized back side of the man's head that he'd seen on the transporter pad had clued him into that much. "Sheldon's stable, but it was touch and go for a while there and now she's comatose. Uhura got off lightly with just the slice through her leg and a few bruises; she said you shielded her."  
  
"Yes," Jim said flatly, defiantly. _I'd do it again, too, and you know that, so don't you dare start lecturing me about putting myself in the line of fire, don't you think I knew the consequences before today, damn it?!_

Bones was starting to look concerned again. "Jim--"  
  
Jim held up a hand, and was dismayed to find that it was shaking. "Stop. Just..." He trailed off. Swallowed. "I need to sleep. Or something." Cry, maybe, except he hadn't cried since he was six, not since Frank beat him that first time. "Tell Spock--"  
  
He cut himself off and closed his eyes. Spock. There, in the back of his mind, was that faint pulse of awareness of Other, that ever-present touch of Spock's mind to his. He touched it back. Caressed it. Pulled away and opened his eyes to meet Bones's eyes squarely.  
  
"Please request that Mr Spock see to the funeral arrangements for Ensign Torero and send the proper condolences to his wife and family," he said more steadily. He wished briefly that he felt more sure of himself, more stable, to be able to do it himself.  
  
"I suppose you're gonna insist on going back to your own room?" Bones drawled. It was a shallow attempt at normalcy, and it fell flat between them.  
  
"I'll sleep here," Jim said, and turned his head away, closing his eyes again and breathing deeply, willing himself to sleep. Distantly, he heard Bones move away and speak quietly to Christine. He began to count his heartbeats. One... two... three....  
  
Despite his exhaustion and the pain throbbing in his head and lower back, sleep is a long time coming.

 

 **W** HEN JIM WAS little, he'd entertained the idea of having a big family with lots and lots of kids. As he got older, the idea became somewhat more realistic, but there were always children, plural. When his mother had married Frank, he'd modified the idea further, vowing that he would do better, he wouldn't be a drunk like this bastard of a stepfather, he wouldn't beat his kids, and - guiltily at this small show of disloyalty - he wouldn't go and die and leave his family alone.  
  
Then Tarsus IV happened. He'd begged his mother to let him go with her, just this once, please, he'd be good, he swore he would if she'd take him with her (away from Frank) just this one time. His mother had caved, and Jim, ecstatic, had gone with his mother's diplomatic science and medical team to Tarsus IV.  
  
It had been an accident, a lapse of thought about the time. He'd been playing with some of the local kids, revelling in being able to make friends with people who didn't know or care that he was the late Captain George Kirk's son, and he'd missed the shuttle back up to the ship. He'd been running back to the transportation dock to see if he could contact his mother when everything had gone to hell.  
  
Somewhere between the shooting and the explosions, he'd been knocked unconscious into a gutter, and with nothing on him to identify him as James T Kirk he was rounded up with the rest of the unclaimed or orphanned children. He'd awakened to pain, soreness all over his body and intense pain in his groin, and a cold voice explaining to someone unseen that he had been "dealt with" and "would not be polluting the bloodlines with his illbred genetics".  
  
As the scene played out, the pain gradually moved from his groin to his lower back, the cold voice shifting to the impersonal voice of a Starfleet doctor from the rescue team who had checked him over, repeating over and over that he would never have children... never have children... never have... never....  
  
Jim woke, disoriented, to a dim room and the thought that memories really did make for the shittiest nightmares. The pain in his back remained, though as memory reasserted itself he was pretty sure it was all in his head. Bones wouldn't have left any injuries behind.  
  
Not physical ones.  
  
He had, however, left Jim alone in the darkened sickbay. Jim sat up slowly, biting his lip to hold in a hiss of pain as sore muscles made themselves known and his head throbbed annoyingly. No one came running to push him back down, so he looked around and took stock of his situation.  
  
Unsurprisingly, he was naked beneath the sheet covering him. He'd figured that his clothes would be a total loss. Someone, possibly Bones or Spock, had brought a clean uniform for him and left it folded next to the biobed. That seemed like enough of a sign to Jim, and he dressed quietly before slowly making his escape from sickbay.  
  
Once free, he let his feet take him where they would as he just breathed and worked to push the nightmare down and away. Part of him wondered why Spock hadn't woken him from it, but he pushed that thought aside as well. He couldn't think about that. He didn't want to think about anything yet.  
  
When he looked up again, he blinked. His feet had apparently taken him, not to the bridge or his quarters, but to the door of Spock's quarters. Hesitantly, he punched in the code for the door and stepped inside to a wave of Vulcan-similar heat, glancing around for his lover.  
  
The room was empty.  
  
Jim staggered a bit and slumped against the wall, looking around the room dully. He hadn't expected Spock to be there, really he hadn't, but the fact that he wasn't just... It made him feel so very alone, somehow.  
  
Forcing himself away from the wall, he stripped off his clothes, leaving them in a defiant pile on the floor before all but collapsing onto the bed, curling up in the middle and staring blankly at one of the geometric Vulcan wall hangings Spock had up.  
  
He lay there for a very long time, just staring at that wall hanging.  
  
At some point, in the dark, he silently began to cry.

 

  **H** IS MOTHER COULDN'T look at him for a long time after they were reunited. A more removed, adult perspective might have seen that as Winona Kirk's guilt at what she perceived as her having failed her youngest son. To Jim Kirk, still reeling from the trauma of two months of hell on Tarsus IV followed by a whirlwind rescue from a seemingly impersonal Starfleet, his pained and insecure mind had seen his mother's behaviour as being disappointed in him somehow.  
  
_"Due to the damage from the operation, it is highly probable that you will never have children."_  
  
Delivered in such an impersonal, apparently uncaring tone, those words had succeeded where years of Frank's drunken beatings had failed. Those words hadn't broken Jim. They had _shattered_ him, completely destroying the one dream he had held onto through the years. For weeks, he had been a ghost, haunting his room and drifting through school. His mother actually caught Frank beating him and divorced the bastard, but by then it was too little too late.  
  
And then, one day at school, one of the older boys had said something in Jim's hearing about a pregnant ex-girlfriend, and Jim had punched him.  
  
The fire was back, at last, but it was a cold fire built upon disgust and pain and self-loathing. Jim began picking fights frequently, at least half the time getting his ass handed to him until he got better. He didn't care; all he wanted was to make it stop, to drown the mental anguish in physical pain.  
  
The drinking began when he was sixteen. He never drank as much as Frank had - who wants to deal with that shit? - but he stopped avoiding it. What did it matter anymore? He would never have children, so there was no risk that he'd get drunk and beat them the way Frank had done. It helped him forget for awhile, push the thoughts down and away where they couldn't hurt. Sex became another form of release, another way to forget. It wasn't like he could get the girls pregnant, after all. The first time some girl had tried to claim he had, Jim had laughed until he cried bitter tears.  
  
Stupid... weak... worthless... can't do anything right... can't protect anyone.... can't have children.... not good enough.... worthless....  
  
_"Jim."_  
  
There was a hand on his shoulder. Even in the heat of the room, it burned like fire against his bare skin.  
  
_Spock._  
  
He opened his eyes and looked up. Spock had come in at some point and seated himself on the bed next to Jim. His brows were slightly furrowed as he gazed down at Jim, and Jim flinched minutely, looking away.  
  
_"T'hy'la."_  
  
The word echoed across their bond, threaded through with love and concern, and Jim's walls crumbled. Tears spilled from his eyes and down his cheeks as he curled in on himself, the grief, sorrow and self-loathing pouring forth unchecked.  
  
_I'm sorry... How can you stand to touch me? I'm worthless... Can't do anything right.... Got our daughter killed.... I'm sorry... Please don't hate me...._  
  
"Oh, t'hy'la..."  
  
Warm, burning arms encircled him and pulled him close against an equally warm, burning body. The feelings of love and concern and tenderness intensified as fingers brushed across his face. They touched familiar points and Jim fell into the mind meld without thought.  
  
And this time, as he fell, Spock was there to catch him.

 

 _ **D** OCTOR McCOY HAS informed me of the situation._  
  
_God, Spock, I didn't even know..._  
  
_Nor did I. From the doctor's calculations, it is logical to assume that she had not yet developed to the point of having recognisably differing brain activity._  
  
_The baby, our daughter, is dead..._  
  
_I grieve with thee, t'hy'la._  
  
_I'm sorry, I'm so sorry...._  
  
_You have nothing to apologise for._  
  
_I got our baby killed..._  
  
_You did not know, had no way of knowing. You acted as you felt best with the information you had._  
  
_You should hate me..._  
  
_**Never!**_  
  
_...I love you, Spock...._  
  
_And I love you, Jim. Always._  
  
_Promise?_  
  
_I promise, t'hy'la._  
  
Coming up from a mind meld with Spock was always harder than dropping into one. Their minds liked each other, were so deeply in tune with one another that many of the crew had joked they must have bonded long before they had made their relationship official. McCoy had grumbled darkly that it must be due to "that strange old Vulcan messing around in Jim's head". Uhura had scoffed that it was due to them being _them_ , and had once remarked privately to Spock that she wondered how she hadn't noticed sooner.  
  
As had become their custom, Spock was the first to open his eyes, treating Jim to the natural/disorienting perspective of looking at his own face - pale, dark-circled and tear-stained - from his lover's eyes. Then Jim opened his eyes, focused them on Spock's face, and for a moment he experienced the familiar double vision of one mind in two bodies before his mind remembered which body it was supposed to inhabit. Even as their minds settled back, they didn't let go completely, fingers tangled together between them as they lay on the bed, and Jim only noticed that they had been breathing in tandem when his chest hitched slightly with a silent sob.  
  
Something very subtle shifted in Spock's face, too subtle for most to catch, but Jim, who was as adept at reading Spocks as he was himself, recognised the softness, tenderness and sorrow and love wrapped up in that dark brown gaze. Spock drew Jim back into his arms, and Jim went willingly, allowing his lover - his t'hy'la - to hold him against his chest and shelter him there.  
  
No words were spoken; none were needed.  
  
For the first time since before that disasterous away mission, Jim was able to close his eyes and drift into a peaceful sleep.  
  
There were no nightmares this time.

 

 **T** HE BODY OF the fetus was cremated and disposed of quietly by Doctor McCoy. Neither Jim nor Spock could bring themselves to assign a name to the partially developed form, and so there was no marker or memorial. They told only Uhura, who hugged them both and cried their tears for them and ran interference with the rest of the command staff. Jim was allowed a week of personal leave, but he was back on shift within two days with a smile and his usual confident attitude; Jim Kirk was, after all, an accomplished actor well before he was the captain of the _Enterprise_.  
  
If he spent his nights as much on the observation deck as he did in his or Spock's quarters, that was nobody else's business but theirs.  
  
And Jim had needed that time he spent on the observation deck. Mostly to think; he had more than enough to think about, anyone could agree with that. Occasionally he used one of many data pads to research topics he'd brushed against in passing (mostly from glancing over Bones's shoulder in the dorms) but had never researched in depth himself. Once or twice, he brought an old-fashioned sketching pad, which he filled with calculations and schematics; the technology was there, but untested in this application, and he had to stop himself more than once from obsessively rechecking his math and the chemical compositions for the nutrient fluids.  
  
Spock found him there, three weeks after the Incident, seated cross-legged in front of the smaller view port off to the left side of the room. Jim barely raised a hand in greeting, his eyes on the data pad he held. Quietly, so as not to disturb his t'hy'la's concentration, Spock stepped into the room. The doors slid closed behind him with a quiet hiss as he crossed to the left, stopping two feet from Jim and kneeling carefully on the floor beside him.  
  
The silence stretched between them, charged with something just beyond the ability to define, but not uncomfortably. As Spock watched, some of the tension slowly bled out of Jim's slightly hunched form, shoulders dropping and lines smoothing until, at length, Jim flicked his fingers and sent the data pad scrolling back to the beginning. Glancing up for the first time, a hesitant smile crossing his face, the blond held the data pad out to Spock.  
  
"It's still under review," Jim admitted quietly as Spock's eyes flicked down to the information being presented to him. Surgical transference of a fetus... uterine-replicating artificial incubation.... "It has to be ratified by Earth and New Vulcan before Bones will go anywhere near it, the paranoid bastard..."  
  
"Jim?" Spock breathed, looking up. The other man cleared his throat and shifted, but didn't look away, and Spock rejoiced at the returned spark in those beloved blue eyes, not quiet the familiar determined fire... but getting there.  
  
"You know me and no-win scenarios," Jim said, lips curving in a faint echo of his old cocky grin.  
  
"I seem to recall your attitude towards them being worth adopting," Spock murmured, leaning in. Jim met him halfway, as Spock had hoped. They were not, as the human saying went, out of the woods just yet.  
  
But they were getting there.

  
**-palikaya-**  


**Author's Note:**

> The specifics of Vulcan anatomy can be found in the Star Trek Online Geekipedia article ["Introduction to Vulcan Physiology"](http://www.stogeek.com/wiki/Introduction_To_Vulcan_Physiology). I swear, aside from the egg thing, I didn't make this stuff up.
> 
> "palikaya" = "beggining" according to the [Vulcan Language Dictionary](http://www.starbase-10.de/vld/)


End file.
